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DataTransferItem: kind property

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since ⁨November 2016⁩.

The read-only DataTransferItem.kind property returns the kind–a string or a file–of the DataTransferItem object representing the drag data item.

Value

A string representing the drag data item's kind. It must be one of the following values:

'file'

If the drag data item is a file.

'string'

If the kind of drag data item is a plain Unicode string.

Examples

This example shows the use of the kind property.

function dropHandler(ev) {
  console.log("Drop");
  ev.preventDefault();
  for (const item of ev.dataTransfer.items) {
    if (item.kind === "string" && item.type.match("^text/plain")) {
      // This item is the target node
      item.getAsString((s) => {
        ev.target.appendChild(document.getElementById(s));
      });
    } else if (item.kind === "string" && item.type.match("^text/html")) {
      // Drag data item is HTML
      console.log("… Drop: HTML");
    } else if (item.kind === "file" && item.type.match("^image/")) {
      // Drag data item is an image file
      const f = item.getAsFile();
      console.log("… Drop: File");
    }
  }
}

Specifications

Browser compatibility

Desktop Mobile
Chrome Edge Firefox Opera Safari Chrome Android Firefox for Android Opera Android Safari on IOS Samsung Internet WebView Android WebView on iOS
kind 11 12 50 12 5.1 18 50 ≤14 5 1.0 4 5

See also

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Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License v2.5 or later.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/DataTransferItem/kind